


The Long Haul

by Roadie



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/F, Not technically a coffee shop but there was no tag for truck stop diner, Trucker/Waitress AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28071774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadie/pseuds/Roadie
Summary: "Where’re you headed next?" Maggie asks."Omaha for a drop-off," the girl says, "then Des Moines for a pickup. Not sure where after that, just hoping to stay on the road for awhile." She hands over a visa, and Maggie takes it to the till just a couple of feet away.Maggie cocks an eyebrow while she runs the card. "Where's home?""National City. Well, the suburbs."Maggie whistles. "Long haul indeed."The girl shrugs. "I didn't take this job because I wanted to be home."
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 51
Kudos: 173





	1. The original story

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a twitter fic a couple of months ago, and have just recently finally had time to clean it up for posting here. I've also added a little epilogue in thanks to those of you who read this during its initial posting and, of course, for anyone to whom this whole story is entirely new.
> 
> This might be the purest, most unadulterated fluff I've ever written. 
> 
> Shout-out to @little_x_pixies on Twitter for the outstanding title suggestion. Thank you!
> 
> And also shout-out to @ironicpotential for having done some DELIGHTFUL art of Maggie and Alex in this universe. You can see the art in chapter 3.

When Maggie started working here, the sign over the door was still hand-painted. "M'gann's Diner," it read then, on plywood hanging above well-maintained clapboard.

But times started changing. It’s hard to draw business in Nebraska when your name is hard for the locals to pronounce. So M’gann changed the name to Megan's Diner, and then Flying J came along and gave her an offer she couldn't refuse. They built one of their massive travel centers overtop of M’gann’s restaurant, they took out the few pumps of diesel and unleaded and built massive car and truck fuelling stations, they paved the overgrown field in the back to provide rows and rows of overnight parking for eighteen-wheelers. 

So now, Maggie works in a truck stop diner that looks like every other truck stop diner on the I-80.

Sometimes she recognizes regular drivers, but they rarely recognize her. 

They forget about her as soon as they leave because in her uniform, she fades into the blur of all the Flying J waitresses they'd seen along their route.

The drivers are almost all men, and mostly white. The older ones are usually deaf from driving the noisy rigs in the 70s. The young ones are either painfully eager or painfully defeated, depending on their path into the job.

The tips got worse after they became the Flying J, but the benefits got better. She has health and dental, and she's enrolled her aunt as a dependent so her diabetes medication is covered. 

Every day looks more or less like the day before. Food orders, aching feet, sweating or shivering depending on the season. Online classes from the community college sometimes, in composition or criminology or pre-law. Regular propositions to follow some lonely road warrior into the back of his cab for the night. 

Sometimes the drivers offer more than that.

"Come on with me," they say. "There's nothing like the open road."

And it might be tempting, in some ways, if the offers weren’t all coming from men old enough to be her father. 

If they weren’t all coming from men, period.

Except for a family trip to Chicago when she was twelve, Maggie has never left the state. 

\--

It is rare that a person can look back on their life and identify a specific, particular moment when everything changed, but Maggie can.

She remembers that moment quite specifically. Flock of Seagulls playing on the overhead, singing _Aurora Borealis comes in view._ The smell of toasting bread coming from the kitchen. A family sitting at the corner booth, their toddler shrieking, and Maggie’s glad she doesn’t have to work the floor tonday.

The truck stop diner doesn’t sell alcohol. The liability is too high when most of their clients are drivers. But they have a bar anyway, where lonely drivers can sit and eat and talk to someone who’s paid to be there. 

Maggie is working behind that bar when a girl walks in alone.

Maggie takes her for a road-tripper, at first--a student type who drives for glamour, not for work, and slums it in truck stop diners for the experience.

But then she comes up to Maggie and asks, "How do I sign up for a shower?"

That gives Maggie pause. Truck stop showers aren’t the kind of thing road trippers do.

"Ask at the store counter," Maggie says. "They'll give you a number. Are you going to eat?"

The woman blinks at her like she hasn't thought about it.

"Uh," she says, "I guess so?" 

Maggie smiles and pushes a menu across the counter to her. "There's going to be a long wait for the showers at this hour. Give me your order now, then go sign up for your shower, and you can eat while you wait for your turn."

The girl smiles broadly at her in thanks, showing a bottom row of crooked teeth.

She orders a sandwich-salad combo, then goes and registers for her shower, and when she comes back, she takes a seat at the bar instead of a table.

"Food'll be out soon," Maggie says. "Can I get you a drink?"

"Water's fine," the girl replies. Then: "Thanks for your help."

Maggie reaches for a glass and fills it from the ice basin, and then tops it with water from the beverage hose. "Of course,” she says, smiling. “You new at this?"

“Long haul, yeah.” The girl chuckles. “I drove local and regional for a couple months, but I never had to shower at a stop. They don't teach you about truck stop etiquette in driving school."

Maggie laughs. "I'm pretty sure that's the first time anyone's used the word 'etiquette' in this room." 

The girl blushes a little and rolls her eyes. "I doubt that," she says, and though her tone is a little bashful, she gives off an air of defensiveness. "The road is full of poets and philosophers." 

This is true, Maggie concedes. She’s met her share of road prophets and street preachers in her years in this room. But the thing with flirting is that it isn’t so much about the content of what you said as the style of it, the intent behind it.

 _You're unique_ , Maggie’s intent had been.

And she is. Now, after her shower, she’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and it reveals an elaborate sleeve tattoo, molecular diagrams folding into a double-helix along her forearm that unfurls into stars that cluster into a galaxy at her shoulder. 

It can be hard to tell with truckers. A lot of the women are butch in the way country women are sometimes butch, and it doesn’t mean they’re into women. But Maggie’s pretty sure this girl is gay, or at least some flavour of queer. It’s not just the tattoo—the sides of her head are shaved and her dress sense is urban enough, and young enough, that Maggie suspects she knows what she’s telegraphing.

She decides to test it. "You get a lot of poets making dedications to you over the radio?"

"Oh my God, constantly." The girl collapses onto her elbows, an exaggerated performance of exhaustion. "I mean, not literally. But the flirting, the invitations to lunch at the nearest Pilot, from people who don't know anything about me! Not my age, not how I look, which..." She runs her hand through her hair, clearing it from the shaved sides. "If they did, they'd maybe see why I keep saying no." 

Maggie grins. "Maybe if I cut my hair, they'd get the picture and leave me alone, too."

The girl grins back. Her smile’s a little crooked, pulling to the right, and it pulls a little on Maggie, too, as they share that moment that Maggie so rarely shares with anyone outside the bars she visits from time to time in Lincoln and Omaha. 

She resists the urge to tug on the hem of her uniform dress, wishing she were wearing something nicer. 

The tension of the moment is delicious and intimidating and a little bit overwhelming. When the cook dings the "order up" bell, Maggie is almost relieved by the excuse it gives her to step away for a minute. 

She serves the girl her meal and then has to go take care of a few other late customers, and then it's time to start the staff-change process, stacking glasses and stocking straws and condiments for the third shift. She checks in on the girl when she can, and keeps an eye out for the shower number printed on the ticket she's set on the counter. When the number gets close, she drops off the check.

"Hang on," the girl says, "I'll give you my card." 

Maggie waits while the girl rifles through her wallet.

"Where’re you headed next?" she asks.

"Omaha for a drop-off," the girl says, "then Des Moines for a pickup. Not sure where after that, just hoping to stay on the road for awhile." She hands over a visa, and Maggie takes it to the till just a couple of feet away. 

Maggie cocks an eyebrow while she runs the card. "Where's home?"

"National City. Well, the suburbs."

Maggie whistles. "Long haul indeed."

The girl shrugs. "I didn't take this job because I wanted to be home."

She hands the girl her card and her receipts and begins to walk away—it's polite to give customers some privacy while they're filling out the tip—but the girl keeps talking. "I've been all over the east coast before, and all over the west, but never really been in the middle until now."

Maggie laughs. "You haven't missed much." 

"Oh, I don't know." The girl closes the billfold and pushes it back across the bar, stars and molecules dancing along her arm. "It's been beautiful. Nebraska is so broad with these huge skies."

"It's nice at night," Maggie concedes. She points to the constellations on Alex’s shoulder. "If you can, stop somewhere dark tonight and enjoy the stars. You can see a lot of them." 

The girl’s eyes flash, wistful. "That sounds amazing," she says, "but I’m parked here for the night to sleep."

The Fleetwood Mac overhead cuts out and the loudspeaker calls for shower number 104. The girl's number.

"That's me," she says, standing up. "Where do I go?" 

"Back out into the store, follow the signs to the restrooms and keep going. Look for your number on the screen to see which shower's yours."

The girl tips her head in thanks. "Appreciated your help today."

Maggie smiles. "Any time." 

She can't help biting her lip and watching as the girl walks away.

Don't see too many drivers with an ass like that.

From behind her, Eric, the line cook, laughs. 

Maggie checks on her tables and finishes her stocking and then bides her time behind the counter until her shift ends. Sam, her relief for the night shift, arrives a few minutes early. 

"You can go if you want," Sam says. "Things are quiet."

Sam’s timing is beyond coincidental. It's magical. Because as she finishes her offer—"Leave me your PIN and I'll clock you out on time, Kyle won’t care"—Maggie happens to glance past her to see the hot girl walking out to the lot. Her hair is damp and combed back, and she's so damn attractive that the loose-fitting T-shirt she's wearing over skinny jeans might as well be lingerie for what it's doing to Maggie's libido. 

The girl is smiling at her phone as she walks. A girlfriend, maybe? But she didn't mention one.

Maggie gets hit on by drivers all the time, but she has never before this moment encountered one she wanted to hit on herself. 

"Yeah, thanks," she says to Sam. She scribbles her work PIN on a napkin and hands it over, and then hastily grabs her bag and her jacket from under the bar and hurries out into the lot. 

She has never before been so thankful that employee parking is way in the back, behind the truck parking. If she happens, by coincidence, to choose the route between the trucks that Hot Girl also takes—well, what of it? 

She walks with her phone in hand, as though she were checking texts, so when she happens to run right into Hot Girl who is fishing in her bag for her keys, well, it's nothing but an act of terrible clumsiness, isn't it? 

"I'm so sorry!" she says, after she bumps into Hot Girl's (surprisingly muscular?) un-tattooed shoulder.

The girl laughs, waving a hand in dismissal. "No worries. You done for the day?"

"Yeah," Maggie says. "My car's over there." She points beyond, toward the back of the lot. 

Hot Girl smiles and scoots over, even though there's plenty of space behind her for Maggie to walk around.

"Drive safe," Hot Girl says. "Have a nice night."

"Thanks," Maggie says, "you too." 

As she skirts around Hot Girl and begins to walk away, she scours her brain, searching for an excuse to keep talking. She hears the jingle of keys, the clunking of them in the heavy lock of the cab, the mechanical sound of the door opening, and finally she pivots and calls back: 

"Do you want to see some stars?" 

The girl freezes with one foot in midair, the other on one of the cab steps, and squints toward Maggie in the dark.

She bites her lip and then glances at her watch. "I... I shouldn't..." 

Maggie wants to smack herself. Of course, truckers are always on tight schedules of maximizing driving hours around legal-minimum rest hours.

She opens her mouth to say, "That's okay," but then the girl speaks again.

"Fuck it," she says. "Sure." 

Maggie grins.

The girl pockets her phone and her wallet and stuffs her bag into the cab, and then climbs back down to the tarmac, closing the door above her with a satisfying clunk.

"Lead the way," she says.

Maggie leads her to the passenger side of her ancient Saturn. Her car isn't a mess, thankfully. It's not embarrassing to have Hot Girl in there with her. The CD player kicks into the Barenaked Ladies album she's been listening to, though, and she braces herself for judgment, but it never comes.

"Oh, dude, I love them," Hot Girl gushes, scanning the dashboard before clicking the volume up a notch. “Favourite band ever.”

"I knew you were my type," Maggie replies, and then wants to smack herself in the face.

It's an instinct. The kind of impulse that happens when the nerve signal only travels as far as your spine, not your brain.

Maggie wants to crawl into a hole and die.

But Hot Girl just cackles. 

"Okay, then" she says, still laughing, "I'm glad we know where we all stand."

Maggie thinks that this is patently untrue. Maggie has no idea whatsoever where she stands. She doesn't even know Hot Girl's name. 

But Hot Girl is smiling, mouthing along to the lyrics of "Who Needs Sleep?" and Maggie's heart surges all the way up into her throat.

This is stupid. This is completely stupid.

But she silences those voices by putting the car into gear and heading out onto the freeway. 

They drive quietly, Hot Girl occasionally drumming along to the music with her hands on her thighs, until Maggie says, "So, um, I'm Maggie."

"I know," Hot Girl says, “it was on your nametag.” She grins again, and Maggie wonders if it's humanly possible not to be disarmed by those crooked bottom teeth. 

Maggie swallows, and then she forces herself to nod casually. She knows that Hot Girl knew her name this, but she'd hoped that introducing herself would inspire Hot Girl to do the same. But clearly that didn't work, so she takes the more direct approach: "And you are...?"

Hot Girl jumps up in her seat, spine going rigid. 

"Oh, my God!" she says, her tone apologetic. "I'm Alex! Sorry, I thought I said that before. Or maybe that you got it from my credit card."

Maggie shrugs. "I don't really look at the names on the cards. I kind of feel like, I don't know, it's not my business?" 

Alex nods. "I get that."

Maggie drives them two exits up, and then turns off onto a little two-lane rural road that runs long and deep between cornfields. After a few minutes, she turns again, this one onto a gravel path. The dark is thick, soupy beyond Maggie's headlights. 

Alex leans forward and squints out the window. "You're not a serial killer, are you? Because I didn't get that vibe, but this wouldn't be the first time I've been pulled off my game by a cute girl."

Maggie suppresses a grin. _Now_ she knows where she stands. 

"No, there's a good spot up here, I promise," she says. "And for what it's worth, there's still cell service here. At least on my carrier, anyway. So we're not, like, isolated, really."

Alex glances at her phone. "Good to know."

At the end of this road is a steel barn where a farmer she knows stores his combine and other heavy equipment. A motion sensor light kicks on as they approach. Maggie parks at the edge of the gravel, and she and Alex get out.

Maggie hops up onto the car’s still-warm hood and leans back against the windshield, gesturing for Alex to lay beside her. Alex climbs up carefully and lays beside Maggie, their elbows just barely touching.

"We have to hold really still so the light turns off," Maggie says.

Her skin prickles with the proximity of the girl so close. 

When the light goes dark, Alex gasps a little in the sudden pitch black, the car jolting under them.

"You okay?" Maggie asks.

She desperately wants to take Alex's hand.

"Yeah," Alex says.

"Just give it a minute for your eyes to adjust to the dark." 

They lie there, still and quiet, as above them the stars jump out one at a time, each one a surprise, until they are blanketed by the breadth of the milky way across the sky.

After several lingering minutes, Maggie dares to roll her head to look at Alex while she looks up to the sky. Alex's eyes are wide, jumping in saccades, her lip caught in her teeth. 

"This is even better than Midvale," she says eventually. "You can see a lot of stars there, but it's too close to National City to really escape the light pollution." She points up. "I've never seen the whole tail of the dragon before." 

Maggie looks up again. "The dragon?"

The car shakes a little as Alex slides over, bringing her head close to Maggie's and then pointing upward again. "Constellation Draco. It runs between the big and little dippers, kind of like a big backwards number 5 with a head on top, see?" 

She traces the length of the constellation with an extended finger, and Maggie has to press a little closer to get the angle right to follow it.

"I didn't know that one," Maggie says. "What other ones can you see?" 

For twenty minutes, Alex lists constellations Maggie's never seen, and some she's never heard of. She points out the whole Great Bear, not just the Big Dipper. She points out Perseus and Pegasus and Cygnus. 

"It's almost harder to point them out when there are so many stars," Alex murmurs.

The sound of that voice, gentle and so close to Maggie's ear, suffuses Maggie with a warm, tingling feeling. The stars are beautiful but Maggie wants to turn her back on them. 

She wants to see them only reflected in Alex's eyes. And then she wants to not see anything at all for awhile.

But Alex will drive away in the morning, and Maggie's already going to miss her. Even without anything more to make it worse. 

They lay there for a few minutes longer before Alex finally says, "I should get back."

Maggie tries not to sigh. "Of course."

So they climb down and get in the car. Maggie drives them back to the truck stop.

When Maggie parks, Alex twists in her seat to face her. "Thanks,” she sas. “This was a nice way to break up the drive." 

"It was a nice way to break up my day," Maggie replies.

Alex looks at her for a long moment, lip between her teeth, contemplating.

Maggie won't say no if Alex asks, but Maggie also won't be the one to do the asking. Not of someone she may never see again. 

But finally Alex pats the dashboard with one hand, decision made.

"I hope I'll see you again," she says.

"I'm here Wednesday to Sunday every week," Maggie replies.

With a last smile and something inscrutable in her eyes, Alex opens the door and leaves. 

Maggie watches her walk to her rig, unlock it, and climb in.

Then she drives home.

When she shows up the following afternoon for her shift, Alex's truck is gone from the lot.

\--

Meeting Alex was a welcome break in the monotony of Maggie's days. She thinks back on it often in the days that follow.

On clear nights, she sometimes pulls over on her drive home and looks for Draco. 

(She finds it, usually, but it's not as thrilling as the first time, leaning so close to Alex that they shared a line of sight.) 

She wonders if she'll ever see Alex again.

I-80 is a major interstate. Surely Alex will drive this way again if she sticks with the job. But timing is everything in trucking. You don't stop until the law requires it, and then only for as long as the law requires it. 

She has regulars—which is to say, people she sees every few weeks or months, who claim this particular Flying J has the best meatloaf or apple pie or turkey club or whatever—but they often have to strategize their calendars to make it work, sometimes a few days or a week ahead. 

She wonders whether Alex might work her calendar that way for her, too.

It takes her less time than she thought to find out.

\--

About three weeks after the day she met Alex, she's working the floor when someone comes to stand behind her and says:

"How do I sign up for a shower?" 

Maggie wheels.

Alex is grinning. The sides of her head are freshly shaved, her hair styled back from her face. She's wearing skinny jeans and chucks and the softest-looking t-shirt, and Maggie wants to hug her.

God, this is so stupid. 

Crushes are bad enough when they're not on girls who live on the edge of the continent, to the extent that long-haul drivers live anywhere at all.

Maggie doesn't hug her. But she grins and says "Hey!" and makes sure Alex gets a booth in her section. 

She runs a check on all of her tables, making sure they won't need her for at least a few minutes, before going to Alex's table.

"Didn't think I'd see you here again so soon," she says. 

Alex shrugs. "Drove circles through the midwest for two weeks and then booked a haul from Cincinnati to Boise. So I thought I'd stop in and see you."

Here's the thing about Maggie's truck stop: It's only accessible from the eastbound lanes. To get here going West, Alex would have had to drive past, exit the freeway, and double-back going east again. And then when she leaves, she'll have to go east and turn around at the next exit to go west.

It's not a massive inconvenience.

But it's still an inconvenience Alex took for Maggie, to see Maggie, and now an entire swarm of butterflies have taken up residence in Maggie's intestines. 

Maggie takes Alex's order, and checks in with her as often as she can. It's much earlier in the day than the last time Alex was here, though. She's closer to the beginning of her shift than the end of it. 

Even if Alex is taking mandated rest time here, there won't be much of it left by the time Maggie's shift ends.

When she brings Alex her check, she asks, "What's next for you?"

"Sleep," Alex says. "Going to drive through the night tonight. Easier with all the construction." 

Maggie nods. A lot of drivers prefer to drive at night when there's less traffic.

But then: "When are you off?" Alex asks. "Ten, like last time?"

"Yeah. Two to ten is my regular."

"Come see me when you're done?"

Alex’s eyes are bright and hopeful and Maggie is so stupidly fucked. 

"Sure," she says.

Alex jots down her plate number and describes where she's parked.

"Just knock," she says.

Maggie pockets the note and nods.

By the end of her shift, Maggie is exhausted as usual but she's buzzing, too, thrumming with anticipation. She grabs her jacket and her bag, says goodbye to Sam, and heads out to the lot. 

Alex's rig is at the end, as she described. There's a light on inside. Maggie walks to the driver's side and reaches up to knock on the door.

"Hang on!" Alex calls, and then there's a rustling and the door opens and Alex hops to the ground in front of Maggie. 

"Hi," she says, but there's something nervous about her, something on edge. She tucks her thumbs into her front pockets as though it's the only way to keep them still.

"Hi," Maggie says back. "Want to go see stars again?"

Alex laughs, bashful and clearly disarmed. 

"I can't, this time, for real. I have to hit the road."

Maggie forces herself to keep smiling through the weight of disappointment in her gut. "Totally. Of course, silly of me to ask."

"No!" Alex pulls her hands from her pockets and throws them into the space between them. 

It's a frantic, wild gesture. It feels a bit desperate.

"No, it's just..." She sighs and shoves her fingers into her hair, exasperated with herself. "I want to. I really want to. It's just..."

"The job," Maggie finishes for her. "It's okay, I get it." 

"Yeah," Alex says. "Which..." She draws her hands in again now, knotting her fingers together. "I, I just, I had a great time with you that night. And I've been thinking about it a lot, these past few weeks, and how I have one regret about it. It didn't seem right at the time, you know? I didn't know when I'd see you again, or if I'd see you again, so I didn't want to, you know, be stupid, but now I wish I'd just gone ahead and—" 

The rambling, coming from someone who seems so impossibly cool and put together on the outside, is making Maggie's stomach turn somersaults.

She decides to end Alex's misery.

"You want to kiss me."

Alex's jaw shuts with a tick. She blinks for a moment, and then nods. 

"I wanted to. It seemed irresponsible. But since then, I can't stop thinking—"

Maggie shuts her up again, this time by taking two steps forward, sliding her hands around Alex's nape, and pulling their mouths together. 

For a moment, Alex stands frozen. Maggie feels like she's kissing a statue. But then she shudders, her hands coming to Maggie's elbows, and she deepens the kiss. She tastes fresh, like toothpaste, and draws Maggie in close, into her warmth. And then there's a pivot, and Maggie finds herself pressed between Alex's body and the cab, and that's helpful, honestly, because her knees are completely gone and her heart is racing and the sentient part of her is filling with helium, drifting up, floating. 

Maggie clutches Alex close, and Alex has one palm against the truck and the other hand clawing against Maggie's back, so Maggie turns her head and draws Alex further still. What started as a sweet, gentle kiss has turned downright filthy. 

Maggie can't help it: she wants Alex to spend the night thinking about her tongue. God knows she's going to be thinking about Alex's. 

After a few minutes (or maybe a few hours), Alex pulls away. Her lips are swollen and parted, and she's panting a little.

"Jesus," she whispers, "I knew it would be good, but..." She drops her head forward, resting her forehead ragainst the cab's shell. "Damn." 

Maggie tips her head to rest against Alex's. "Yeah," she says. "That was amazing."

"Seriously."

They stand there like that for awhile, feeling each other breathe, a truck engine starts up nearby, shaking them out of their moment. 

"I have to go," Alex says, her voice hoarse, like she can’t bear to say it.

Maggie understands. When she manages to say “okay,” her voice isn’t much better.

But they still don't move for awhile until a truck door slams, and Alex finally steps back.

Maggie doesn't know what to do. Should she ask for Alex's number? And then do what with it? Alex is from California. Who knows when she might drive through Nebraska again.

So they break apart, and Maggie gets out of the way of the door, and Alex steps around her to open it.

"I'll be seeing you," Alex says. It might be a question. Maggie can't tell. 

"I'll be here," Maggie replies.

Alex darts in, giving her one more quick kiss before she climbs up into her rig.

Maggie goes to her car and watches in the rearview as Alex's truck pulls out of the lot and back onto the road.

\--

Maggie spends days thinking about that kiss. She thinks about it when she's brushing her teeth, when she's driving to and from work. Eric ribs her for being distracted on shift.

She tries not to be heartbroken, but she is.

Weeks pass. A month. Another. 

Over time, she becomes less mournful. The kiss becomes something she's glad she had, rather than something she's sad she lost, even though she can't help but be haunted by the persistent "what if" of it all.

Three months. Four. Through the heat of summer, into the cool of fall. 

It's a Wednesday in late October, and Maggie isn't working. She traded shifts with Sam who needed the day off on Monday, so when she gets a call from work an hour before the end of her shift time, she's exasperated, expecting it to be her manager, Kyle, calling her in. 

But it's not Kyle. It's Sam.

"Okay don't yell at me," Sam says, "but there's this driver here who says she's your friend? And she tried to bribe me to call you, but I said I couldn't be bought, so she said I could punch her hard in the nose if you told me I could, so—" 

Maggie's been lying on her sofa watching Netflix; she jumps up now. "Who is it?"

"She says her name is... Alex? Can I punch her?"

"Don't punch her!" Maggie grips the phome with two hands, as though it might drift away like a balloon. "Put her on!" 

There's a pause.

"Oooooooooh, I get it. Is this a booty call? Because I want to hear all—"

But every second that passes is a second closer to when Alex has to drive away again. "Put her on, Sam, please!"

"All right, all right, but you owe me, I'm just saying." 

Then there's a brief murmur of background noise, and then a familiar voice:

"Oh, thank God, I timed my whole schedule for a week around getting here at the end of your shift!" 

And there they are, all the butterflies that Maggie thought she'd put to sleep.

"I switched my shift," Maggie says. The hastily adds, "just for this week," because she doesn't want Alex to be confused about when to find her. 

"Yeah. Um." They're quiet for a moment. Maggie doesn't know what to say. She wants to see Alex, but it seems a little forward to assume—

"Have dinner with me?" Alex blurts.

(Somewhere nearby, Sam howls.) 

"I mean, you've probably already eaten,” Alex rambles, “and you probably don't want to come here on your day off, so maybe this is stupid—"

"Alex."

Alex stops.

"I'd love to have dinner with you."

A pause.

"...really?"

"Yeah. But you're right about coming in on my day off. Can I pick you up and take you somewhere?"

"Yes! Yeah. Amazing. I'll, um, just wait for you outside?"

"Sure. I'll be there in fifteen."

It doesn't take 15 minutes to get to the Flying J, but Maggie takes five minutes to change into her best skinny jeans and a fitted tee and her favorite leather jacket and a pair of boots with a little heel to make her ass look good. She finger-combs her hair in the hallway mirror, then calls to her Tìa that she's heading out for a bit, and heads out the door. 

Alex is waiting for her in the neon lights in front of the truck stop, leaning against the brick with a foot kicked up against the wall. She’s wearing a denim jacket with a hoodie underneath, and a few strands of her hair have fallen loose over her eyes, and God, Maggie thinks, it should be illegal for someone who sits all day to have a body like that.

Maggie pulls up to the curb where Alex is standing and then reaches across the center console to pop the door open.

Alex ducks to meet her eyes, and then grins as she climbs in.

Maggie takes a little pride in the fact that Alex double-takes when she gets in and sees her outfit. "Never seen you with your hair down.”

"Real clothes, too," Maggie says, laughing, as she pulls away and heads toward the interstate.

There aren't many restaurants in Blue Springs, and even fewer open late. The only place Maggie is sure will be open is Fong's Chinese Kitchen, so that's where they go.

It's not fancy. The tablecloths and chairs are vinyl. But Maggie has known Mrs. Fong her whole life, and her son, Christopher, was kind to her in high school when nobody else was. The food is great, too, with vegetables that crunch and spice that doesn't pull its punches.

Mrs Fong bustles them to a seat by the window and takes their orders, and then she leaves them alone. 

"So," Maggie asks, "Where've you been?"

Alex leans forward, propping her forearms up the table. Maggie sees the lines of the helix up her skin and is overcome with the desire to follow them with her fingertips. Or maybe her tongue.

The glint in Alex’s eye suggests she’s noticed.

"Up and down the west coast, mostly," Alex says. "I drove the full I-5 more times than I want to count, but couldn't seem to find a load to take me east."

"Trucker’s life," Maggie says. Sometimes, she knows, you're at the mercy of the cargo. 

Alex smiles. “"So, tell me about you."

Maggie doesn't like talking about herself much, usually. But something about Alex feels safe, with her warm, brown eyes and careful hands. She talks about living with her elderly aunt, about working this job since high school for lack of better options. She doesn't hate it. It's boring but reliable, and drivers are easy customers most of the time.

"Is there something you'd rather do?" Alex asks.

And Maggie has no idea why she decides to be honest in her reply. Something about Alex seems to draw it out of her.

"Don't laugh,” she says, playing with her fingers a little, “but I always dreamed of being a PI." 

"Why would I laugh?" Alex asks, dead serious. "One of my favourite people is a PI back in Nat City."

Maggie shrugs. "I don't know. It's cheesy. And I know it's mostly, like, tailing cheating spouses, but I've always liked the puzzle of trying to solve a crime.” She forces her hands to untangle and presses her palms to the tabletop, fingers spread wide. “How about you? How did Alex start driving trucks?"

Alex's story isn't at all what Maggie expected. She talks about flunking out of grad school, about being lucky she never got busted for a DUI, about a disappointed mother that she drives to avoid. 

"What did you study?" Maggie asks.

"Astrophysics."

Maggie laughs. "You were playing me with the constellations, that time."

Alex sputters, indignant. "I was not! I'd never seen that kind of sky in real life!"

It's the easiest, most comfortable date Maggie has ever been on. 

They stay for an hour. Then 90 minutes. But Maggie's starting to feel the pressure of Alex's timeline. All the time they spend here is time she isn't sleeping before she hits the road again.

They have to leave when the restaurant closes at 11:30.

Outside, Alex looks up. 

"Too cloudy for stargazing," she says.

Maggie shrugs. "Yeah."

They walk close to each other to the car, their hands bumping each other, until Maggie calls up all her courage and slides her palm down Alex's. 

Their fingers intertwine, and Alex's grin could light the night sky.

When they reach the car, Alex turns to face Maggie before their hands can disentangle.

"Can I-"

Maggie's nodding frantically before Alex finishes.

This kiss is different from the last one. 

Their first kiss had been grit and fire, pulling from somewhere far, far deeper than Maggie's lips.

This one is gentle, cooling, almost soothing. It's a meeting, not a devouring. A warm welcome. 

An invitation. 

It's easier to pull away from it, because it doesn't feel like an end in itself. It feels like an opening. A beginning..

After Maggie puts the car into gear a minute later, Alex doesn't hesitate to take her hand and play with her fingers. 

It takes far, far too much concentration for Maggie not to drive off the road. 

She returns to the truck stop and parks in the employee section. Then she turns, taking both of Alex's hands in hers.

"So," she says.

"So," Alex says.

It's awkward, and yet not. Alex turns Maggie's hand in hers and runs her thumb over the back of it, a caress that Maggie feels down to her toes. 

When Maggie speaks, she knows exactly what she's saying:

"I've never been inside a truck cab before."

Alex smiles coyly. "Really? All these years in a truck stop and nobody's invited you in for tea?"

Maggie cocks an eyebrow. "I've been invited, but never wanted to go before." 

Alex leans forward, grinning. "Well. I've got Tetley and camomile."

"Mmm... my favourites."

They make out in the car for a few minutes, awkwardly reaching for each other across the center console, before Alex finally pulls back.

"Come on," she says, as she turns and opens the car door. 

They dart across the lot like teens afraid of getting caught, and Maggie waits while Alex fishes out her keys one handed, holding Maggie's hand with the other. Then the cab is open, and Maggie is climbing in behind Alex, and there is no more pretense of tea for the rest of the night. 

\--

Later, Alex and Maggie lie together in Alex's bed. It's perhaps the width of a standard twin bed, so not as narrow as Maggie had thought it would be, and far more comfortable. The space is tidy and well-kept. Alex has a hand-knit afghan covering the bedspread and a little potted plant on a shelf by the foot.

"It's nice in here," Maggie says.

Alex lifts her head from the crook of Maggie's shoulder. "I may have tidied it up yesterday. The sheets are clean, if you were wondering."

Maggie smirks. "That confident in yourself, are you?" 

"Not in the slightest," Alex says with a laugh and a kiss to Maggie's collarbone. "Not confident. Hopeful."

The curtain has been drawn across the cockpit and most of the way across the widow, letting just a little bit of light in from the parking lot outside. The cabin is small and warm and just dark enough, a burrow, and Maggie wishes it could protect them from the passage of time itself.

And yet.

Alex settles back down, laying her body half on top of Maggie's. "I want to go again but I really need to get some sleep," she says. 

Maggie kisses her forehead. "Sleep," she murmurs. “You need to be safe tomorrow.

Alex yawns and nestles herself in closer, hitching both an arm and a leg over Maggie's torso. 

"Stay?" she says, her voice already fading.

Maggie holds her tighter and closes her eyes. "Yes, I'll stay." 

Alex's alarm goes off at 5:30. She reaches out and fumbles for her phone, slapping the home button to snooze it, and then settles back into Maggie’s body.

Maggie blinks and stretches a little under Alex's weight, and then nuzzles into the hair on top of Alex's head. "Don't you need to get going?"

"Mmm. Just a few more minutes."

Maggie is helpless to resist. 

But time doesn't stop, not even for them, not even in this cocoon that feels safe from the entire world.

They get up. Maggie dresses into the clothes she'd worn the night before. Alex opens a magical hatch that Maggie hadn't even noticed and pulls out a fresh change for herself. 

They both understand without speaking that it would be uncomfortable for Maggie to make a walk of shame into her workplace, so Maggie waits, perched on the bed, while Alex fetches them coffee and breakfast sandwiches from the shop in the Flying J.

They eat side by side, their hips touching. 

"I want to try this," Alex says quietly. "I want to try something real with you."

"I bet you say that to all the girls," Maggie says drily. Because Alex is beautiful and charming and uncommitted to anything but the road. There could so easily be other women at other truck stops in other states. This is something Maggie reminded herself of often when she'd been sad after their kiss. 

But Alex grabs Maggie's knee, her body stiff and serious.

"There are no other girls," she says. "I don't... I'm not like that. I'd have told you if there were."

Maggie's heart stutters in her chest. She's never been sure. She's tried not to wonder.

The road and the truck are cruel mistresses, though. Maggie has had coworkers who have tried to have something real with men they'd met through the truck stop. Sam did, once, with a guy who had seemed nice and earnest and wasn’t put off by the fact that she’d had a kid young. It had ended in heartbreak.

"I don't know how we can make it work," Maggie says. "Do you even know when you'll be back here?"

Alex shakes her head and then sags. "I'm headed to New England now, and I have routes along the east coast for at least a month." 

Maggie inhales as deeply as she can, and makes the decision that feels like the only responsible one. "I think... I think we have what we have. And we can keep having it whenever you're here, for as long as neither of us has anything more serious. But I don't want to set us up for heartbreak by trying to have more than we can really sustain. I can't take that." 

Because Maggie is okay with her life, but she's just okay with it. She is neither happy nor unhappy, though the balance always feels a little bit more tipped toward the negative.

She knows that Alex could make her happy, maybe. 

But the risk is too high that she'll break Maggie's heart and then Maggie's scale will tip toward unbearably, irretrievably sad.

Alex squares her shoulders like she's contemplating trying to make an argument, or to make her case.

Part of Maggie wants her to do it. 

But then Alex deflates, and she nods.

Alex kisses Maggie long and hard and deep before Maggie climbs down from the cab.

When Alex drives away, they have not exchanged numbers, and Maggie doesn't know when, or if, she'll see Alex again.

\--

Four days later, Maggie arrives at the start of her shift to be met by her manager, Kyle, waggling his eyebrows at her.

"Mail for you," he says. "It's in with the tip-out box."

Puzzled, Maggie stashes her bag and ducks into the small office behind the kitchen. In the filing cabinet, beside the envelope where the waitstaff tip out to the kitchen, there's a postcard.

It's one of those standard painted-sign postcards that looks like the Springsteen "Asbury Park" album cover, except this one says "Greetings from Peoria." 

On the back is some of the messiest handwriting she's ever seen. Fortunately, a career spent deciphering chicken-scratch on restaurant receipts has prepared her well for this. It reads: 

_Dear Maggie,_

_I hope you won't get mad at me for this. Please don't get mad at me for this. I know this is coming to you at work, but work is the only address I have for you. It was so,_ _so_ _nice to see you yesterday. I really hope I can see you again soon._

_Love,_

_Alex_

The next one comes a day later from Chicago. It has a photograph of that reflective bean sculpture.

_Have you been to Chicago? Maybe we could go someday. I've driven through the outskirts but never been downtown._

Three days after that, from Cleveland. 

_I came here once before for a conference when I was still in grad school. Played hooky for an afternoon to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It's cooler than you'd think!_

Two days later, a picture of the LOVE sculpture from Philadelphia. 

_Most underrated city on the planet. At least as cool as New York, but way less pretentious and expensive. Maybe we could go there together one day?_

A picture of a suspension bridge in Delaware. 

_I have nothing to say about Delaware. By the time you get this, I'll have forgotten Delaware exists or that I ever drove through it._

The postcards keep coming from locations down the coast into the Florida panhandle, then across through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, up to Oklahoma. But by Cleveland, Maggie is hooked. She checks the mail every day and feels a flutter of sadness when there's nothing there. 

She wishes she could write back, that she could find a way to let Alex know that she's getting the notes, that she's loving the notes, that she can't remember the last time something brought her such happiness. But she can't. Every now and then, the postcards mention Alex's next destination, but Maggie knows that by the time she writes a postcard and mails it back, Alex will have left that destination already.

She's terrified that without some kind of response, Alex will get bored and stop writing.

But Alex doesn't. 

_I really hope you're enjoying these_ , says a postcard from Nashville. _I keep worrying that maybe I'm crossing a line. I'm sorry if I'm being a total creeper and if you want to, you can punch me in the nose when I next come through Nebraska._

Sam spies that note while Maggie's reading it. "What's up with that girl and getting punched in the nose? If anyone's punching her in the nose, it's me. You owe me that much, miss Booty Call."

Maggie can only blush. 

Two postcards later, she gets one from Savannah. _I'm trying to find a route home to CA. I need a break. But I'm biding my time until I can get a load to take across the I-80 so that I can visit you. We can have dinner again? Or you can punch me. As you prefer._

But there are a few more postcards from different cities along the eastern seaboard. Wilmington, Richmond, then down to Charlotte, then back to Richmond. 

Maggie traces Alex's journey on a map, and this part feels like the driving equivalent of twiddling her thumbs, waiting for something longer and better. 

Maggie's coworkers tease her. The postcards aren't suggestive or romantic, they don't acknowledge what Maggie and Alex have done together. But Eric calls them her love letters, Kyle jokes about her not-so-ssecret admirer, and Sam just calls Alex "the FB" in contexts where it's inappropriate to say "Fuckbuddy."

Maggie arrives at work on a Friday and before she can even take her jacket off, Eric says, "I already called Sam and she's coming in two hours early to cover for you, you're welcome." 

This puzzles Maggie, but she knows there can only be one explanation. She sprints to the postcard spot.

There's one from Louisville. 

"Quick turn!" it says, "Just found out about a drive needed to Idaho so I traded some things around and I'm headed west as soon as I mail this. I should be there Friday near the end of your shift. I hope you get this before then so you can tape your fists. Safety first for throwing punches, and all."

Maggie tries to focus on her job for the duration of her shift. She tries so hard, but she still forgets three tables' orders and has to go back and take them again.

Eric laughs at her.

On her break, she checks her texts and there's one from Sam that says _You owe me! 👄✌️👅💓_

Sam strolls in at 7:55 and instructs Maggie to get the hell out, they can split tips for any of her lingering tables.

Maggie is confused. Normally the person who finishes the table takes the tip, which is why she sometimes stays a little late to finish a big group. 

"She's not here yet," she says.

Sam rolls her eyes. "Maggie. You’re really going to meet the FB, who's been sending you postcards from all over creation, wearing your diner uniform and smelling like fryer grease?"

Maggie blinks. 

Sam has a point.

"Go," Sam says. "Go change and come back. I know what she looks like. I'll keep her here for you."

And Sam can be a jerk sometimes, but Sam is also the very, very best kind of person.

So Maggie smiles and grabs her jacket and heads for the door.

"Maggie," Sam calls.

Maggie turns, and sees Sam looking at her with uncharacteristically gentle eyes.

"It's okay to want more than what you have," she says, her voice soft. "Take a chance."

Maggie smiles.

She drives fifteen over the limit all the way home, then showers at the speed of light and blow-dries her hair just enough to not look soggy. She dresses in tight jeans and heeled boots and a Barenaked Ladies tee that fits her nicely under a zip hoodie and leather jacket. She feels sexy, but also strong, like she could tackle anything.

She drives back to the Flying J at 15 over the limit again.

When she arrives, she ducks her head into the restaurant where Sam sees her and shakes her head. No Alex yet.

She ducks back outside and skims the parked trucks for a familiar cab, but it’s not there, so she goes back inside again, out of the cold.

There are tables in the store where people can sit to eat donuts and pre-cooked hotdogs when they don't want to wait for table service in the restaurant. Maggie sits there, looking out the window toward the truck entrance.

She waits ten minutes. Twenty. 

An hour.

Ten o'clock passes, the official end of her shift. Ten fifteen. Ten thirty. 

Sam comes over on her break.

"Drivers are saying traffic is hell because of the construction in Lincoln," she says. "If you want, you can go home and I'll call you when she gets here." 

Maggie's stomach is in knots. What if Alex changed her mind? What if she remembered what Maggie had said, that they shouldn't try, and decided to keep driving?

"I'll wait a bit longer," she said. "I'll leave at eleven." 

Sam smiles, her eyes kind again. "Suit yourself."

Another ten minutes pass, another fifteen. Maggie has just about given up hope when a truck pulls in with a red cab that catches her eye.

She squints. It's too hard to tell with the reflection of the gas station lights off the cab windows. 

But she thinks...she's pretty sure... 

Her gut tells her _yes_.

She jumps up and goes outside. Cold as it is in the middle of this Nebraska winter, this is not a reunion she wants to have at work.

The truck follows the path around to the truck lot, and Maggie follows it with her eyes until it parks. 

The motor shuts off, and then the driver turns the cabin light on and Maggie's heart surges into her throat.

It's Alex. She's looking around for something, her wallet or her phone. She finds it, then flips down the visor to straighten her hair in the mirror. 

She's nervous, and it's so damn endearing that Maggie lets out a little sound, a little groan of desire.

Everything about Maggie yearns to be close to Alex. 

And then she realizes that there's no reason she can't be.

She starts jogging across the lot to Alex's rig. The cold is biting, harsh on her cheekbones and her nose, and she wishes she'd worn something warmer, but warmer would also be less fashionable, and she wanted so desperately to look good for Alex today. 

When she jogs around the nose of the truck, its door is open, and she sees a boot below it. It's leather, combat style, but lined, the kind of thing that works for both form and function.

That boot is followed by another boot, and a knee in tight jeans. 

Then both boots hit the ground, with those jeans above them, and those legs in those jeans, that jacket—lightweight down, warm and fitted. And then Alex steps back, her hair tucked under a knit beanie, and she swings the door closed— 

And then jolts when Maggie is revealed behind it.

"Oh my god," she yelps, startled, and then lifts her mittened hands to her head. "Jesus. You scared me."

"Sorry," Maggie says, and crosses the two steps between them to shove Alex against the side of the cab and kiss her. 

Alex freezes for a moment, not yet recovered from her scare and, it seems, not quite processing what's happening, her hands held up in the air on either side of her head as though she's surrendering to some invisible adversary. 

But Maggie slips her hands around Alex's sides, slips them under the hem of her jacket to sit at the small of her back between the down layer and the shirt underneath, and that Alex jolts into awareness. 

She wraps her arms around Maggie, one hand at her back and the other in her hair, and turns her head and parts her lips and kisses Maggie back like a long-lost lover.

Their breath fogs the air around them. Maggie's nose is a little numb. 

But they're in the shadow of the truck, it's fairly dark here. Nobody will notice them here.

Maggie never wants to stop kissing Alex.

Alex, whose mittened hand is molded to Maggie’s cheek, whose mouth is warm against the biting chill of the air, doesn’t seem eager to stop kissing Maggie, either.

But after awhile (moments? hours?) Alex's stomach rumbles. Maggie feels it against her palms, and laughs, pulling back. "Hungry?"

Alex makes a little sound of dismay, her lips chasing Maggie's as if of their own accord, but her stomach rumbles again and she drops her head back against the truck in defeat. 

"Yes," she says. 

Maggie slides her hands out from under Alex's jacket to grab one of Alex's hands. Alex takes her mitten off so Maggie can interlace their fingers and tug her to her car. 

"So," Alex says, as they start your drive. "You got the postcards?"

All of them, stacked in order in her nightstand at home, thumbed through in tired nights at the end of long shifts.

"Yeah," Maggie says.

"And... you _liked_ the postcards." 

Maggie takes her eyes off the road long enough to roll them at Alex, who knows very well she's fishing and doesn't care.

"Hey," Alex says, chuckling, "I had no idea how they'd go over. I was scared every time I sent one that I was, I don’t know, laying it on too thick? So forgive me if I like hearing that you liked them." 

"I loved them," Maggie says. "They were one of the kindest, most special things anyone has ever done for me. I mean it." 

In her peripheral vision, Alex preens, and Maggie can't stand not touching her. She extends a hand and Alex takes it, tangling their fingers and holding them in her lap. 

It's so late that even Fong's is closed, but because it's Friday, there's a late-night pizza place open. They go there and order a veggie pie to share, and then sit at a plastic table by the window under the fluorescent lights. 

They hold hands under the table, waiting for their pizza.

"I'm so sorry I was late," Alex said. "I'd heard about the traffic on the radio so I tried to give myself the lead time, but there was an accident on top of the construction, and—" 

Maggie holds Alex's hand tighter. "It's okay. You're here now. When do you have to haul out?"

"I pulled in at 11:07," Alex says, grinning, "so I'm all yours until 9:07 tomorrow morning."

Time.

They've never had so much time. 

Maggie asks Alex about her drive, about her routes and her customers who are never satisfied and about the sexist garbage she hears over the radio. Alex asks Maggie about her life, about the good customers and the shitty ones, about her hopes and her dreams. 

Alex talks about her sister, Kara, who is the main person she's looking forward to seeing in National City. About her mother, whom she loves even if their relationship has been tense since Alex left grad school. 

Maggie talks about her Tía, about living with her since she was a teenger.

She doesn't talk about what happened when she was fourteen. It's too much weight to put on their fledgling relationship. If a relationship is even what they have. 

It startles her to realize just how badly she wants it to be a relationship.

They talk politics, too. It's a topic they haven't broached before, and Maggie is relieved to hear that they're mostly aligned. She can tell Alex is relieved, too. 

When the pizza is done, they make a gesture of trying to take a short walk down the street, hand in hand. But within half a block, Maggie is shivering, under-dressed as she is in her unlined leather jacket.

"Aren't you the local?" Alex jokes, pulling Maggie in to warm her in her arms. 

"I wanted to look good for you," Maggie says, but she realizes how silly that sounds even as she says it, wrapping her fingers into the front of Alex’s jacket.

"I don't know how you could ever _not_ look good," Alex mutters into the side of Maggie’s head. "From the moment I saw you, I couldn't get you out of my head." 

Maggie presses her forehead to the side of Alex's neck. "Me neither."

They turn and walk back to the car. Maggie lets it run for a minute to warm up and then drives them back to the lot where there's no conversation about whether Maggie will return to Alex's cab with her. 

It's cold when they climb in.

"Hang on," Alex says, fiddling with some buttons on the dashboard until air starts rushing through the vents, even though the truck isn't on.

Maggie blinks. "I didn't know trucks could do that." 

"It's kind of amazing what these trucks can do," Alex replies.

It's still too cold to get undressed, so they both kick their boots off and cuddle under the afghan on Alex's bed. 

Alex fumbles for something behind her and emerges with a remote that turns on a small flat-screen TV mounted to the opposite wall. She surfs for a bit until she finds a "Community" rerun and they laugh at all the right places, snarking at all the same characters. 

When the show ends fifteen minutes later, they're warm.

Maggie turns in Alex's arms and lets her eyes hop from Alex's lips to her eyes to her lips again.

"Got any good music in here?" 

Alex bites her lip and surfs through the satellite channels until she finds a music stream playing Ella Fitzgerald. "How's that?"

"That'll do," Maggie says. She props herself up on an elbow and nudges Alex down to her back. 

She runs her hands under Alex's shirt, under her bra, and pushes them all over her head, and then Alex tugs Maggie down on top of her, and Maggie loses herself in the sensory map of Alex, the sound and the taste and the touch of her. 

She submerges herself so deep she forgets what she was without this. She forgets that there was ever a version of her that's different from this one, here, in this moment, surrounding and surrounded by Alex.

This is a new, untouched plane of desire, slow and soft and thick. 

By the end, when they lie together trading slow kisses in the darkest hours of morning, Maggie knows she can't just let this, everything they have, drive out of the lot in Alex's truck tomorrow.

She has to try.

They have to try. 

They get a few hours of sleep. Guilt twinges at Maggie's mind that she's sending Alex out on the road so underslept, but that worry vanishes when she sees how bright and giddy Alex is in the morning.

Alex offers to get them both breakfast again, but Maggie shakes her head. 

"Let's both go," she says. "I get a discount, and I need to use the bathroom anyway."

And she's decided she no longer cares whether any of her coworkers know about Alex and her. She holds Alex's hand as they walk across the lot. 

In the store, they both go to the bathroom and then Alex goes for the coffees while Maggie grabs breakfast bagels from under the heat lamps. 

As she's walking to join Alex at the register, she crosses paths with Kyle, who looks at her in confusion and then, realizing, grins, pointing to Alex's back with his eyebrows raised: _Her?_

Maggie can't help grinning. She nods. 

He gives her a thumbs-up and makes a face like an impressed dad, and it's dumb that this makes Maggie so happy, but it does.

Maggie gets their breakfast, and they hold hands as they walk back to Alex’s truck. 

As the time ticks by, though, she notices Alex growing stiffer, more withdrawn. Her grip on Maggie's hand alternates between a vice and a limp fish.

For the first time since Alex got down from her truck last night, their conversation becomes stilted. 

Maggie doesn't know what went wrong. 

Alex balls up her sandwich wrapper and tosses it into the little garbage can near the driver's seat, and then she inhales deeply and says, "I can't do this." 

Maggie feels like she's been slapped. "What? Why? This was good, wasn't it?"

"It was amazing," Alex says. "You're amazing. You're... you're perfect, Maggie, and I understand why you don't want to try for more with me, I get it. It would be so hard. But I can't have this with you and just drive away until next time. I want to try for something real with you, Maggie, and if you don't, then I can't keep just—"

And Maggie can't believe that she's somehow let Alex, who sent her postcards from all over the country, who listens to what she says because she's interested, who asks about her work and her tía, who makes her feel like she can astral-project outside of her body with the careful placement of her tongue, still thinks that Maggie doesn't want more from her. 

So Maggie interrupts Alex’s rambling. "I do, Alex," she says.

Alex freezes, her mouth still open. "You do... what?" she says, as though she's afraid of misunderstanding or making assumptions. 

"I do want to try something real with you." Maggie says, leaning over to put her hand on Alex's knee.

Alex blinks like she can't quite believe what she's hearing. "Like... like a relationship."

"Yeah."

"Like I can call you my girlfriend." 

And oh, how sweet a sound is that. "Please," Maggie whispers.

Alex is smiling now, the stiffness fading. "Like I can get your phone number and we can text each other stupid memes and Facetime when we have time?"

Maggie surprises herself by giggling a little. "Yeah, Alex." 

Alex is relaxed, now, back to the giddy euphoria she'd had when they'd woken up this morning. 

Then she narrows her eyes and bites her lip and says slyly, "Will you let me talk dirty to you when I'm sleeping alone in some truckstop in the middle of nowhere, missing you and wanting you so much I think I might actually crawl out of my own skin?”

Maggie groans, because that's not something she'd dared to consider, and something in the glint in Alex's eye suggests that maybe the missing and the wanting in dark, lonely nights is something that Alex has felt before, between their last time together and this one. 

"Oh god, yes, please do that," Maggie says, her voice breathy, and suddenly the fact that she won't be able to share Alex's bed tonight makes her want to cry with frustration. "Let’s start tonight. You'll be tired. I'll do the talking." 

Now it's Alex's turn to shudder, her eyes rolling up into her head for just a second. "Okay. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Tonight."

Maggie grabs Alex by the back of the neck and pulls her in and kisses her.

Maggie sends her first text forty minutes later, a selfie of herself in bed at home with the caption, "Getting more sleep before work. Wish you were here with me." 

She gets Alex's response when she wakes up three hours later. It's a selfie where she's peeking out from behind a large coffee cup. "Wish I were there in more ways than one. You're beautiful. I miss you already." 

Maggie texts back: "Don't text and drive! Seriously, be safe. I can wait. I'm very invested in you staying in one piece." 

Alex responds an hour later. "Never! Would lose my license. I was at a rest stop. Am now, too. Going to take a little nap. Is it weird I hope the pillow still smells like you?" 

"Not weird at all. I slept holding a pillow earlier. It was a poor substitute for holding you. Too squishy. Not warm enough." 

When she gets to work, Eric and Kyle are both there and they both squirrel her into the kitchen for details.

"So?" Kyle asks, "how was it?"

"Kyle says he saw her this morning and she was hella hot," Eric adds.

Maggie blushes. "We're together now," she says. 

"Hell yes you are!" Eric says. Kyle high-fives her.

Maggie is perfectly, impossibly giddy.

Maggie and Alex send each other good morning and good night texts, and various notes throughout the day. They watch movies together on Netflix Party and listen to the same podcasts so they can talk about them. 

On Maggie's days off, Alex sometimes snaps her phone into its dashboard holder and they'll have long conversations while she drives, or sometimes they'll just sit together, cameras on, keeping each other company while Alex drives and Maggie does housework or cooks. 

(Once, they try to do that while Maggie does yoga, and Alex informs her that under no circumstances can they ever do that again because she nearly jack-knifes her truck at least four times.) 

It takes two weeks before Maggie's Tía catches her checking her texts in the kitchen one morning and gives her a sidelong look.

"You look like the cat that caught the canary," she says. 

The text had been a selfie of Alex, just woken up, with a caption that read, "I'm tired of waking up without you. Working with dispatch to try to get a route back through Nebraska soon." 

Maggie's Tía knows that Maggie's gay. She's known since Maggie came to live with her at fourteen. But they have never, not once, talked about it, or even acknowledged it directly. Maggie has never brought a girlfriend home. When she goes to Lincoln or Omaha for a night out, Tía doesn't ask where she goes, and Maggie doesn't volunteer any details. It's a mutual understanding they have. It gives her aunt a level of plausible deniability. The dynamics of dependence have shifted since Maggie was a teenager, but it feels like a respect she owes to her aunt for the years of support and the half-lifetime they've spent together. 

But none of the past girlfriends have been Alex. None of them have been at all like Alex. They've been hot and fun and have mostly worn out fast. 

Even though Alex is on the road, and even though they've spent so little time together, there's a stability to her, to them, that Maggie has never felt before. 

So when her tía looks at her like that, with love and just a little humour in her eyes, Maggie decides to be honest.

"I've met someone," she says.

Her tía hums. "I thought so. In Lincoln?"

Maggie shakes her head. "No, Tía, at work." 

"Be careful dating a coworker, mija, that can be awkward."

Maggie phrases her response carefully. She wants to give her aunt an out, an option to keep that deniability intact if she wants to. She grips the back of a kitchen chair. "It's not a coworker. It's a driver." 

Tía Julia raises her eyebrows. "A lady driver, eh?"

Maggie's grip on the chair is all that keeps her knees from buckling. "Yes."

Tía pulls out the chair on one side of the table and waves to Maggie to sit opposite her. "Tell me about her."

Maggie does.

That night, on Facetime with Alex, Maggie cries like a child. She tells Alex everything: about her parents, about getting kicked out, about dreams of college and a move to a coastal city vaporizing under the pressure of financial instability.

About how that conversation with her Tía, where, for the first time, she spoke freely—or as freely as anyone ever did to the person who'd raised them—about this part of herself, felt like a gasp of healing air when she hadn't even known she was choking. 

Alex clutches the phone close, in both of her hands, holding back her own tears as she whispers how desperately she wishes she could be there, how badly she wants to hold Maggie in her arms. She begs Maggie to imagine that Alex is there with her; that she’s holding her close, kissing her cheeks, wiping her tears. She spins a dream of a hot bath together, Maggie resting in her arms against her chest. She paints a vision of hot tea and cheesy sitcoms in a huge, cozy bed.

In the edge of the frame, stars dot Alex’s shoulder.

"I'm going to make this happen," Alex murmurs. "It might take some time, but I'm going to make this happen." 

Maggie falls asleep with the phone on her pillow, the connection still live, Alex still there.

Two days later, Alex calls and says, "I'm going to owe dispatch a whole bunch of favours, but I made it work. I'll be there Thursday at the end of your shift." 

Maggie's so giddy her skin tingles.

They spend the whole night in Alex's cab. Maggie brings them food from the restaurant and they eat there, and then they lay in bed and share whispered affections. Maggie walks her fingers up nucleotides, across constellations in the dark. They make love quietly, and fall asleep wrapped in each other.

Watching Alex go, the following morning, should be easier, rationally speaking. It should be, because she knows they'll be in touch later that same day, and every day after.

But Maggie is devastated.

She's distracted through an entire workday, and then later when she's lying in bed and feeling like her heart is somewhere else, she remembers why she had been so reluctant to do this.

She remembers why these kinds of relationships never work. 

Alex calls her that night. She declines the call. 

But when it comes to Alex, Maggie is too weak even for passive-aggression. She calls her back the next day.

"How long do you think we can do this?" she asks, fighting to keep the sadness out of her voice. Alex sees through her, and when she answers, her voice shakes.

"I'll do this for as long as it takes," she says. "And I'm going to do everything I can to make you happy within the constraints we have. But I'll understand if this is too hard. I get it. It sucks." 

Despite how sad she feels, Maggie thinks of what it's like to be with Alex. To be in her arms, yes, but also just to spend time with her, even if they're not together, and it raises her up, and it defeats her.

"It sucks so much," Maggie says, "but you're worth it."

Weeks turn into months. She sees Alex every six weeks, roughly, for just a few hours each time. Maggie has moments of this unbearable sadness. She's longing all the time. It becomes a new part of the pattern of her highly patterned, monotonous life. 

One night in March, Maggie ends her shift to find a text from Alex that says _CALL ME ASAP!!! 🥳_

The party emoji keeps Maggie from panicking.

That's probably why Alex included it.

She calls Alex from the car on her way home. 

Alex's face, on the screen, is bright, even at the late hour (well, slightly less late where she is, in Colorado, but still). She's grinning like she can't contain herself. 

"I have news!" she exclaims.

Her excitement is infectious. "What's up?" Maggie asks. 

Alex actually squeals a little. "Okay! So! I've been working with the dispatcher to make this work. I've got a drop-off a week from Monday in Des Moines, and a pickup in Omaha on Friday afternoon." 

Maggie blinks. Her brain takes a minute to catch up to what Alex is saying. "Monday. Until Friday."

Alex nods frantically in the Facetime frame. "And, like, I was looking, and there are some really cute hotels in Omaha? I thought maybe we could have a little vacation together? You can take me to the places you like! But I know your work week starts Wednesday, so I can also just come and hang out with you in Blue Springs—"

Three whole days together, and parts of two more. Four whole nights.

Maggie can't even believe it's real. 

"I'll get the time off," she gasps. It won't be an issue. She never takes vacation. Kyle will be fine with it. She can trade some shifts to make up some of the lost income.

Alex bounces a little in the frame, giddy. "So I can book the hotel?" 

The entirety of Maggie's body is on fire in the best possible way. "Yes. Book it." 

She anticipates that Monday in a way she hasn't anticipated anything since she was a child counting down to Christmas or her birthday. She counts the sleeps. She plays the game where she counts the days forward, and then counts them back: _I'll see her in three days. Three days ago, there was the nice couple at the restaurant who left a huge tip—that was no time ago at all!_

She trades for a morning shift on Monday, because Alex has to drop her load in Des Moines in the afternoon and then, after the paperwork is processed, drive another two hours into Omaha. She'll work the third shift on Friday night, too. 

But Tuesday through Thursday, she’ll be all Alex’s.

She finishes her shift, then goes home for a late lunch and a shower, and then says goodbye to her Tía and starts driving. 

Alex has arranged to leave her truck parked at a truck stop on the edge of town. She's waiting there, two coffees in hand, when Maggie pulls up.

Her face might actually be glowing. It's the most beautiful thing Maggie's seen. 

They kiss hello in the car, frantic and dizzy, and then Alex shoves a coffee into Maggie's hands.

"I want to go out tonight," she says, "so power up!"

Maggie holds up the cup as a toast and then takes a sip. 

Alex has booked them at a Hyatt in the Old Market, because she has made very clear that she doesn't want to set foot in a car all week if she doesn't have to. She wants to walk everywhere. Maggie takes them to a hipster Chinese fusion place, and then they go to a cocktail bar. They hold hands. Even when they're eating, they each use chopsticks with one hand while playing with each other's fingers. By the time they make it to bed, they're too tired to do anything but kiss and sleep. 

(They make up for that in the morning. Maggie thanks God for room service and decides that if Alex's rule for the week is no cars, hers is no clothing before 11:00.)

They go to museums. They drink fancy, overpriced coffee with oat milk. They walk along the river for hours, just to enjoy the sun and the perfect spring chill and each other.

They go to a speakeasy and drink elaborate cocktails that involve ridiculous steps like lighting cinnamon sticks on fire.

They go to a drag show and take body shots off each other's necks. 

(Afterwards, they sneak around back, into a derelict alley, and Maggie does desperate, frantic things to Alex that are probably illegal to do in a space that’s technically public.) 

(Back in the hotel, Alex presses Maggie down into the mattress and does exquisite things to her body that are probably illegal in several states.) 

Everything about the week feels like the life another Maggie, in another universe, could have.

She wants this. She desperately wants this. She wants a life like this. Not a life of vacation, of course; nobody lives truly like this all the time. She has always enjoyed coming to Omaha, but never before has she found herself imagining what it might be like to have access to this all the time. Museums, shows. Places to go. Places where she can hold hands with a girl and nobody really cares beyond, maybe, a few side-eyes.

She wants this with Alex.

On Thursday night, she wonders how quickly she can crack the space-time continuum to do the whole week over again. 

But above everything else, above the nights out and the mornings in, the greatest part of the vacation has been getting to know Alex better. Getting to spend enough time in the same space that they both let their guards down. They don't have to talk all the time. They don't have to be "on" with each other. They can just... be.

It comes so, so easily.

When Maggie is with Alex, she feels like herself. But a happier version of herself. 

On that Thursday night, she wants to entwine herself around Alex, to pull so hard that their bodies merge.

She settles for joining their bodies in all the ways two women's bodies can be joined. She makes Alex beg, and then kisses her face while she recovers. 

"I'm falling in love with you," she murmurs into the dark.

Alex turns her head, tilting it closer. Her smile is a soft, intimate thing. "I'm already there."

They don't sleep the whole night. 

The next day, Maggie drives Alex to her truck and parks beside it. Once Alex has taken her overnight bag and tossed it in, they stand there in the late-morning sun.

They've cried so many times after saying goodbye.

This is the first time they start before. 

"I'll see you soon, okay?" Alex murmurs.

"You know where to find me," Maggie whispers back.

Alex gets into her truck, and Maggie into her car, and Maggie watches in the rearview as Alex drives out of a different truckstop onto the same wide, anonymous freeway.

It's Alex who brings it up a few days later, much to Maggie's relief.

They're lying in bed. Maggie, at home, has a window open to nothing but cornfields, so she doesn't curtain it. She enjoys the moonlight.

Alex looks bluish from the light of her phone screen. 

"I've been trying to see a way beyond this," she says.

Maggie hums. She's been thinking about it too. "Any ideas?"

Alex shrugs. She's lying on her side so it's awkward, and it makes Maggie want to touch her. 

"I can try to set up Nebraska as my home base. It's a more central location so I could probably be back more often than I go to California." She smirks a little. "I'm more excited to see you than to go to California, anyway. My sister's getting jealous." 

Maggie has "met" Alex's sister a couple of times on Facetime, a perky blonde who has a baller job writing for CatCo.

It makes her understand why Alex has such a complex about home and her mother.

"I'd like that," Maggie says, "but I don't want to keep you from your real home." 

Alex's face twists, her expression something deep and inscrutable.

"I mean, I'd still go to California," she says. "I'd just come to you more. But it's still only a short-term solution. I don't plan to drive rigs like this forever." 

Maggie knows this. She knows Alex started driving because it was a job with decent pay that gave her an excuse to get far away from National City, from her mother, from everything that reminded her of failure. But she also knows that this is a job, not a career, for her. 

That difference—between a job and a career—is something she's thought about more since she's been with Alex than she ever did before.

Maybe Maggie could have a career. She’s still young.

She just has to figure out what she wants it to be. 

There are no solutions by the end of that conversation. No ideas even proposed. But Alex tells her she loves her at the end, and Maggie says it back, and she hangs her stars on the sound of those words in Alex's clear, gentle voice. 

The next time Alex comes through town, Maggie takes a deep breath and invites her to the house for dinner with Tía Julia.

She invites her the day before, when Alex is driving and they’remchatting on Facetime, and Alex responds with a solid five seconds of silence. 

"I know it's a big ask," Maggie rambles, "so it's totally okay if you're not up to it, but she seems to really want to meet you, and she's an amazing cook, so—"

"Yes!" Alex finally says. "Yes, I'd love to come! I was just surprised, and I'm a bit nervous about it." 

Platitudes rise to Maggie’s lips, but she swallows them down and instead opts for honesty.

"I'm nervous too," she says, "but I can't imagine a better first girl for me to take home."

Dinner is lovely. Tía makes rice and beans and a huge salad from fresh Nebraska greens. 

"I like her," Tía says, the next day. "I like the way she looks at you. I like the way you make each other smile."

Just when Maggie thinks she can't possibly love anyone more, she finds her heart just that much more full for both her aunt and Alex that day. 

But still, that morning, she watches Alex drive away.

Alex does notify dispatch that she wants to take as many opportunities as she can to drive through Nebraska. After their week in April, they get a long weekend in May and a day in June. She does, after all, still have to be in California from time to time.

Maggie tries to settle into it. Not to worry too much about the future. 

Months later, when everything has changed, Maggie will think back to a conversation in mid-June and realize that that was the starting point. That in June, Alex was already carefully starting to plot out their options.

The conversation starts with a question: 

"Do you want to stay in Nebraska?"

Maggie doesn’t know how to answer right away. She's lived in Nebraska her whole life. She has friendships here, with her coworkers and people around town. 

But she loves the city. _Loves_ it. Most of the people she knows make a point of hating cities. Even her more liberal friends say it's too expensive, too crowded, it charges too much for tiny portions of food served on huge plates. 

Maggie _likes_ those tiny food portions. She'd rather have a little bit of something delicious than a huge plate of something that’s just decent. She likes overpriced coffee, when she can afford it. 

She holds hands with Alex in public and imagines what it would be like to have that every day, every time she leaves her house. 

All this time with Alex has been making her realize that somehow or another, she really, really needs to get out of Blue Springs.

And that's what she says in her answer. "It's not Nebraska I want to get away from, it's Blue Springs. Beyond that, I can go anywhere." 

Two weeks later, another question: "If you could chase one of your dreams—college, the PI license, or something else—what would it be?"

"Probably the PI license," Maggie says. "Because it's a job. And if I did it well, I could do college at the same time." 

In mid-July, Alex comes to Nebraska for an overnight. She's twitchy and jittery through their meal at Fong's. When they get back to her truck, Maggie reaches for her, tries to kiss her, but she turns her head away.

"What's wrong?" Maggie asks. "Did I do something?" 

Alex’s head whips over at that. "No," she says softly. "No. You're perfect. I'm just nervous."

Maggie lifts a hand to her cheek, runs a thumb over her cheekbone. "Nervous about what?"

Alex takes a deep breath. 

"I want you to come to National City with me."

Maggie, taken aback, takes a moment to process the words. "I... what?"

"Okay, wait, that wasn't the right place to start." Alex is flapping now, and then she runs her hand over her face, "There's more to it than that." 

Maggie catches her flailing hands and tugs her to sit on the edge of the bed. "Slow down. Tell me everything."

Alex takes a breath and runs her fingers through her hair once, to steady herself, before clasping Maggie's hands. 

"I've been talking to my old supervisor about going back to school. The department's agreed to let me have another shot."

Maggie's heart plummets. 

She's thrilled for Alex, of course, but an Alex who's in grad school is an Alex who will have even fewer opportunities to come to Nebraska. 

Her fear must show in her face, because Alex tightens her grip on Maggie's hands and tugs her closer. "That's why I want you to come with me."

Maggie swallows. Her tongue feels like sandpaper, too big for her mouth. 

Move to National City.

Leave Blue Springs and Nebraska and the Flying J and Tía Julia for National City and California and Alex.

"I... I don't... what would I even do there?"

"That's what's so perfect!" Alex exclaims. "Remember I told you I have a friend who's a PI?" 

Maggie nods. Alex mentioned it on one of their first dates, and it's come up a few times since then.

"Okay, so, I looked it up, and to qualify for a PI license in California you have to have a paid job in investigations for 3 years. And then I talked to him. I've known him my entire life, Maggie, he's the most wonderful person, and he's a really amazing investigator. He's not just chasing cheating spouses, he does contract work for law firms. He always complains he's overworked. So I asked him, and he said he'd interview you for an apprenticeship."

Maggie can't process this. It's all too much. Her head feels like it's spinning.

Alex balks, her nerves taking over again. "It would be paid, of course. And he'd get you set up with healthcare?"

Maggie's hands feel clammy. She digs her fingers into Alex's, grounding herself. 

"Or, I mean, there are restaurants in National City? There are even Flying J's there on the edge of town. You could do the same job you're doing here, but there."

Maggie manages to swallow over her sandpaper tongue, and she nods. "When... when do you need to know?

Alex outlines her plan. Her term starts in late September, and she has to give her notice, but she has a route booked from Nebraska to National City in early August. That's in three weeks, and the drive will take about four days, and Maggie could ride along. 

In National City, Maggie could live in Alex's apartment while she gets settled, because Alex will have one more month of driving.

"It'll give you time to find a place," Alex says, and Maggie is relieved that Alex isn't assuming they'd live together right away. 

Maggie can imagine that future with Alex. She can taste it, sweet on the back of her tongue.

But it would be hasty to jump there now.

"And then by mid-September I'll be home," Alex says. Now it's her turn to touch Maggie's cheek. 

"I'll be home, and we can start our lives together, for real."

Maggie nods. God, it's tempting. It's so tempting.

And it's terrifying.

"I need to think about it," she says.

Alex nods. "Of course. Of course." 

They undress and slide into bed. For the first time in all their nights together, neither of them has wandering hands. Maggie curls into Alex's side, warm and safe and scared.

"If I say no," Maggie asks quietly into the dark, "will that be the end? Of us?"

Alex doesn't hesitate. "Oh, Sweetie, no." She presses a kiss to Maggie's forehead. "It'll be harder. There's no question that it'll be harder. But I'm not letting you go that easy." 

Their goodbye kiss in the morning is a tender one. Gentle.

"Keep me posted on your thought process, okay?" Alex asks.

Maggie promises. 

It's July 16th. Alex will be back on August 4th.

Maggie goes home, showers. She texts Alex: "I never got your friend's name. The PI."

Alex answers instantly: "J'onn Jones Investigations."

Maggie decides that just this once, she'll let Alex get away with texting and driving. 

She looks him up. His website is sleek and professional. His track record is amazing. He's helped parents find lost children. He's worked for lawyers and unions and a few activist groups Maggie likes when she googles them.

His life is her childhood dream, basically. 

That night, lying in bed,Maggie takes a deep breath and dares to dream of possible futures for the first time since she was a teenager. 

Sam happens, by coincidence, to crack a joke about it at work the next day. "So when's Alex going to whisk you outta here like some knight in shining armor with a truck for a horse?"

Maggie doesn't answer.

She wonders what the Flying J looks like in a truck rearview. 

It takes five days for Tía Julia to stop her in the middle of stress-cleaning the kitchen.

"Talk to me, Maggie," she says, "You've been edgy for days. Tell me what's wrong."

Maggie sits at the table, drops her head in her hands, and tells her everything. 

At the end of the story, Tía hums thoughtfully.

"Why wouldn't you go?"

It's not the response Maggie expected.

"It's such a huge change," Maggie says.

Tía Julia shifts forward, laying her hand in the table between them. "And since when have you been a coward?" 

Maggie's spine stiffens at the insinuation. "I'm not a coward."

"Of course you're not." Tía smiles. With one finger, she touches Maggie's cheek. "I've known you your whole life. The hardest part of having you with me since you were fourteen has been watching the light flicker out of your eyes. You were so full of life as a child, Maggie! You loved horses and trucks and hot air balloons. Your knees were always scuffed. You were curious and interested, and you got into the best kinds of trouble. And then everything happened with your parents, and I've watched you shut down those vibrant parts of yourself that you think will offend other people." Her hand slides forward, cupping Maggie’s cheek, now. "I think you should go. Take a risk. Blue Springs will always be here. I'll always be here." 

"But what about your health insurance, Tía?"

Tía Julia laughs, loud and warm. "Sweetheart, is that really what's holding you back? I'm less than six months from Medicare. There's the marketplace now, too."

"But it's so expensive!" 

"And?" Tía Julia takes both of Maggie's hands in hers. "Things now aren't like they were when you first came to me, Maggie. We’ve both been working for years. The mortgage is paid off. I have savings." 

She shakes Maggie hands a little, as though she can jostle her into understanding. "My parents didn't come here for their children to live like we've lived. They wanted better. Go," she says, and her eyes are glistening now. "Go try for something better." 

That night, Maggie sends Kyle her two week notice.

Then she screenshots the email and sends it to Alex with a note:

"Okay. I'm in." 

Alex calls her immediately. She's parked, sitting up in her bed with the light of the muted television dancing over her features.

"Oh my God," she says, rushed, like she can barely catch her breath. "Oh my God. You're coming."

Maggie grins. "I'm coming." 

"You're, like, actually coming and you're going to be with me in Nat City and we're going to be, like, real-life in-person not-long-distance girlfriends."

And Maggie's been nervous about the decision, but Alex's energy and excitement are contagious. 

"Yeah, Alex, we are," she says, her grin stretching so wide it's almost painful.

"Oh my God. I can't wait to tell Kara. Should I put you in touch with J’onn? He's looking forward to talking to you. I mean, I told him it wasn't a guarantee, but that I was hoping, and he—" 

"Sure, Alex," Maggie interrupts, even though the ramble is adorable. "Send me his email? I'll write to him."

"Okay. Okay, I'll do that."

They have phone sex before they sleep.

It's pretty great.

\--

Kyle tells Maggie he's proud of her, and that she'll always have a reference (or a job) with him if she needs one. 

Eric high-fives her and tells her to send him postcards because he misses getting them from Alex. 

(She fake-punches him on the shoulder. "Those were mine!" 

He holds his hands up and laughs, saying, "They were postcards! There's no privacy with postcards!") 

Sam tells her that Alex must have a magical vag to justify moving halfway across the continent for a booty call, and also that she's going to take over Maggie's shifts to stop working overnights, and also congratulations, asshole, for finding a way out of here. 

Maggie writes to J’onn and they set up a Skype meeting for later in the week. She's upfront about her lack of experience, but talks about the things she's learned from her father and the introductory courses she's taken in legal systems and accounting at the community college. 

He listens and nods. His demeanor is stern and solid but not unkind. The word that keeps coming to Maggie’s mind to describe him is "fair."

When the interview part of their conversation is over, he sits up straighter. 

"I don't mind the lack of experience. Just means you'll have fewer bad habits to unlearn,” he says. “You get to be a good judge of character in this line of work, and I have a good feeling about you. We'll start with a three-month probationary period and take it from there. Good?" 

Maggie's feet bounce under the table with excitement and nerves and thrill. "That sounds perfect, sir."

He laughs, low and deep. "J’onn will be fine, Maggie. I'll send you a contract by the end of the day. Return it as soon as you can so I can update my health insurance broker." 

Maggie uses the scanner at work to send the paperwork back the very next day.

Over the next days, Maggie packs. She drives around town, digesting these places she's seen almost every day for her whole life. 

On one of her days off, she gets up early and drives to Omaha, revisiting some of the places she went to with Alex. She goes back to the gay bars that taught her how to feel safe and queer at the same time. 

And then the day comes.

Alex rolls into the Flying J in the late morning. She spent last night outside Omaha, because Maggie told her she didn't want them to spend time at her Flying J—it would be too hard, the risk too high that she'd get cold feet and chicken out. 

Alex would have to pull in, and Maggie would get into the truck, and they'd drive out, with no stopping for at least an hour.

Tía Julia drives Maggie to the Flying J and they stand outside, on the curb outside the storefront, waiting. Maggie has a suitcase full of clothes and valuables, and a soft-sided cooler full of food—sandwiches and granola bars and a tupperware of tamales that Tía spent all day yesterday making for her to share with Alex on the road.

Alex sent Maggie a GPS tracking link before she left Omaha, so Maggie can see that she's just minutes away, now.

Tía looks at Maggie, her eyes glistening. "You have to call me every day, at least until you get settled," she says. "Just so I know you're okay."

"I will, Tía."

"Don't take any nonsense from that girl or anyone else. Put yourself first, always." 

Maggie smiles. "I will, Tía."

She sees a familiar-looking truck pulling into the truck entrance, and glances down at her phone to confirm. The little blinking red dot is right on top of her, now.

"There she is," she says.

Alex parks just beyond the fueling station. Maggie and Tía Julia walk over, and Alex hops down to meet them. 

She greets them both with a hug and then reaches for Maggie's suitcase. "Let me take that," she says, and begins to haul it up the steps into the cab.

Maggie turns to her aunt. "Well, here I go."

"Here you go!"

They hug for a long time. 

When she pulls back, Tía takes Maggie's face in her hands. "Dream big enough for all of us," she says. Then she looks at Alex, who has climbed back down from the cab but is hanging back, giving them space. "You take care of my girl or I'm coming after you, you hear?" 

Alex's eyes widen, but then she smiles, and when she says, "I will, I promise," her voice is genuine.

Tía smiles. "Get going," she says, "you're not getting any younger."

Maggie hoists the cooler up onto her shoulder and nods once, decisively, before climbing up into the rig. 

She climbs across to the passenger seat, and Alex climbs in after her, closing the door with a final, resolute clunk.

Before she starts the engine, though, she crosses the space between them to give Maggie a sweet, gentle kiss, full of hope and promise and love that makes Maggie’s heart flutter like a happy butterfly.

"Hi," Alex whispers. 

"Hi," Maggie whispers back.

It's a perfect, blue-sky day in Nebraska. The corn is high, almost ready for harvest, and the height of the cab makes the horizon feel further away than it does from the ground.

Alex starts the truck and eases it into gear, its massive engine purring as she loops them around the back of the Flying J to the exit. 

Maggie opens her window, breathing the warm summer air. If she turns her head, she can see her Tía climbing into the driver's seat of the old Saturn.

Then Alex swings onto the freeway on-ramp, and Maggie watches in the rearview as the Flying J recedes into her past.


	2. The epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maggie does not have time for this.

Maggie does not have time for this.

Outside the room, she can hear Alex’s heavy footsteps running around, the sound of drawers opening and closing with more force than is strictly necessary.

Alex is stressed. Maggie knows she’s stressed. Maggie knows that she’s not helping Alex’s stress by sitting here where she is, at her desk in their bedroom, staring at this stupid blank sheet of paper, her stupid pen hanging limp in her fingers, as useless as a wet noodle for all the writing she’s getting done. But Maggie has been trying to do this for days (for _weeks_ ) and she’s officially out of time. She has to get it done, and she has to get it done now.

“We have to go, Babe,” Alex calls, as another drawer slams.

“I’m coming!” Maggie calls back. 

She is. She really is. She just needs to write something. Anything. 

She can’t leave here without having put words on this page.

She stares at it. Stares at the pen.

Both are from work. The paper is letterhead stock, the _Jones Investigations_ logo embossed at the top. They still have boxes of it at the office, but it’s out of date now, since they finalized the transition to the new branding just last week. She brought home a ream to use for household scrap paper.

The new stuff at the office has the up-to-date _Jones and Sawyer_ _Investigations_ branding.

The first thing Maggie did when they opened the first box two weeks ago was to peel off the first sheet and set it aside to give to her Tía the next time she sees her.

“Maggie!” Alex calls again. “We really have to go!”

“I know! Just one more second!”

She stares at the page. 

Her eyes slide off it, along the desk, toward the clothes closet off to the side. There’s a hook on the back of the door, and from that hook hangs the gown she picked up two days ago. The cheap polyester is still wrinkled, even though she’d hung it in the bathroom when she’d taken a really, really hot shower this morning, hoping the steam would help. 

The gown is black, with purple and yellow NCU colours on the trim and a yellow honour cord that she’s more proud of than she’d care to admit to anyone.

Alex had looked aghast when Maggie had told her she didn’t plan to walk in her graduation ceremony.

“I’m almost 34, Alex,” Maggie had said, “all the pomp and circumstance is for people a lot younger than me."

“The pomp and circumstance is for the people who love you, Maggie,” Alex had replied. “You really going to tell Julia that she won’t get to cheer for you while you walk across the stage, the first university graduate in your family? Hell, you really think you’re going to tell _Kara_ that she won’t get to cheer for you? Or my mother? Or J’onn, for crying out loud?”

 _Or me?_ Was clearly, endearingly implied in the sparkle of Alex’s eyes and the quirk of her eyebrows.

Maggie has to admit that she loved screaming for Alex when she’d received her doctoral hood a year earlier.

Keys jingle by the front door. “Maggie! Do you really want a repeat of the last time we were late to pick up Julia from NCX?”

No, Maggie doesn’t. She really, really doesn’t.

Tía Julia, slightly overwhelmed at the size of the airport, had sought the help of a handsome young Chicano security guard in the arrivals area when she hadn’t been able to find Maggie. When Alex and Maggie came sprinting up a few minutes later, they found Julia chatting away with three young, handsome Latino security guards, all of them smiling at her with that fawning look that young men reserved for their mothers and grandmothers, who had then turned and stared daggers at Maggie for _daring_ to be late for such an important responsibility as picking up her aunt from the airport.

Maggie doesn’t want to go through that again.

But she needs words. Just a start.

Just _something_ on this _damn blank page._

She pulls open the bottom drawer of her desk and shuffles around through the wasteland of old charger cables and office supplies to find the one thing she hopes will give her inspiration.

It hasn’t worked before, but it’s worth another try.

She holds the small box low in her lap and flips it open. 

The ring inside is just a wide, flat band in white gold. No gemstones. They’re not Alex’s style. The inside is engraved, though: an intimacy for Alex to wear against her skin, assuming she decides to wear the ring. It says _My brightest star_.

Maggie hopes it will make Alex remember that night they met, when they’d gone stargazing on the hood of Maggie’s car in Nebraska.

Maggie hopes that Alex will want to be her lodestar for the rest of their lives.

Tomorrow night, at dinner after the graduation ceremony, she plans to ask. She wants to do it in front of Tía Julia and J’onn, who are her family, and Kara and Eliza, whom she hopes will become her family.

She wants to make her case not just to Alex, but to all of them, that she can be worth it. That she deserves to be married to someone as kind and beautiful and brilliant as Alex.

What are the words you use to ask the woman who changed your life to commit to walking with you through the rest of your years?

Maggie doesn’t need to have it all planned out. Her heart is so full of love for Alex that it aches, pounding against the inside of her ribs. She knows that if she can just find a way to start, the rest of it will follow.

But once they pick up Julia, Maggie won’t have another moment alone until the dinner when she wants to propose.

She just. Needs. A. Start.

The band stares up at her, its hammered finish glinting, offering no suggestions.

“I’m going to say yes.”

Maggie spins in her chair to see Alex standing in the doorway, eyes soft. She has her keys and wallet in one hand, Maggie’s wallet in the other.

Too late, Maggie realizes she still has the ring box open in her lap. 

She snaps it closed. 

“I’m going to say yes,” Alex says again, taking another step forward. “It doesn’t matter how you ask me. I’m going to say yes.”

Maggie blinks.

She looks down at the ring box, and then back up again at Alex, who has paused, hovering near the foot of the bed. “Did you know?” Maggie asks.

Alex nods. “I was looking for a spare charger,” she says. “I left mine at the lab.”

“When?”

“Last week.” 

“Oh.”

Maggie feels simultaneously elated and disappointed. Her stomach swoops in figure-eights.

Alex drops the wallets and keys on the bedspread—the deep blue one they chose together when they moved into this place, more than three years ago now—and steps closer, bracketing Maggie’s knees with her own. 

“Here’s the thing,” she says. “I have one too.”

Maggie’s swooping stomach lurches to a halt. “What?”  
  
“It’s in my sock drawer,” Alex says, her eyes darting over toward their closet. “I’ve had it for like a month. And then after I saw yours, I started taking it with me whenever we’d do anything where I thought you might ask me, so that I could turn around and ask you right back. But I decided that if you hadn’t done it by tomorrow, I was going to ask you at dinner.”

Alex bends down just enough to pick up the box and set it on the desk, and then she lowers herself carefully to Maggie’s lap, resting one arm, and then the other, on Maggie’s shoulders.

“Did you open the box?” Maggie asks, her mind still reeling from all of this.

Alex smiles, something almost sad in her eyes, as though she were dismayed that Maggie would feel the need to ask such a thing. It’s one thing to stumble across a ring box by accident; it’s quite another to open it uninvited and look inside.

“No,” she says, “but I’m sure it’s beautiful, and I know I’m going to love it.” 

It should set Maggie’s mind at ease. Instead, it makes the bar feel even higher.

How can Maggie begin to thank Alex for everything she’s given her? How can she be so brazen as to ask for a lifetime more, when Alex so beautiful, and so kind, and so funny, and so—

Alex kisses her, and everything goes quiet.

Alex’s kisses are familiar, now. Maggie receives them several times a day—fleeting pecks in the morning before work, longer embraces at night before sleep. They settle her. They feel like home, like strength; firm as the ground under her feet.

“Please stop driving yourself crazy over this,” Alex whispers as she pulls back. “I’m going to say yes.”

Maggie exhales. “You’re going to say yes.”

“Yes.”

And Maggie can’t help it: she kisses those smiling lips again, her hands sliding into the back pockets of Alex’s jeans. Alex cradles Maggie’s jaw and kisses her harder, teasing her lips open, and Maggie pulls their bodies tighter—

“No!” Alex gasps, tearing her lips away. She stands up and steps back, half-stumbling toward the door. “I’m not letting you seduce me with your sexy—everything—” she waves a hand in the air, gesturing in Maggie’s general direction, “—when _we have to go to the airport._ Come on!"

Maggie stands up and glances in the mirror. She quickly finger-combs her hair into some approximation of tidy, and then picks up the wallets and keys that Alex has left on the bedspread and follows her out toward the car.

The ring box stays unhidden on the desk, for now.

The words will come.

She’s going to say yes.


	3. The art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This amazing art is by @ironicpotential (find her at that handle on AO3 and on Twitter). If you want to send love her way, I'll tell her to check the comments on this chapter! Maggie and Alex here don't look precisely as I've described them in the fic, and that's partly because I changed Alex's appearance a bit in the revisions, but I'm all for you guys imagining them however you like them best.


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